Instapps Builds Stores For Merchants on Facebook

Made in Malaysia, Instapps helps merchants to set up an online storefront within their Facebook page. Instapps allows merchants to easily manage their product listings and sales.

Once published, the Instapps store appears as a tab on the Facebook page and merchants are able to manage their inventories all within the Instapps management system. The service remains free for merchants for up to eight products. Anything above that, Instapps charges from $9 per month. The idea is very similar to Indonesia’s Onigi which has had more than 14,000 users since June last year.

Instapps was started within Tribeup, a digital marketing agency based in Penang, Malaysia. The first version of Instapps helps users build Facebook landing pages, like Pagemodo does. But the team scrapped the idea after two weeks and it eventually became a Facebook commerce (sometimes dubbed f-commerce) solution application. The team has received angel investment to help Instapps get started.

Despite so much expectation that social commerce will take off, it doesn’t seem to be a widespread reality yet. I think this GigaOM article does a good job of explaining why it hasn’t been a success – and also why it could be a success in the future.